What's unfolding in Gaza isn't a war; it's barbarity in its rawest form. Homes flattened, tents scorched, hospitals shattered, roads cratered, cemeteries desecrated, schools wiped off and governorates reduced to ruins.
Medics, aid workers, journalists and tens of thousands of other civilians lie dead while survivors long for essentials: a drink of clean water, a meal, a tent, a patch of farmland, a flicker of hope. No electricity, no medical aid — not even a safe corridor to flee the hellscape.
Movement is a crime. Forcible landgrabs pull the ground out from under their feet. Innocent bystanders are mowed down in cold blood. Minors are ripped from their homes and carted off to prisons. Disease spreads like a relentless firestorm. Harassment, rape, sexual torture, forced stripping, vandalism, starvation and displacement: this is pure barbarism playing out live before a world that chooses to look away.
At the rotten core of this brutality lies Netanyahu's diabolical plan: not just the erasure of Gaza, but the expulsion of Gazans. His delusion is a Gaza without Gazans. He believes tanks, warplanes, bombs, bullets and blockades can snuff out the Palestinian spirit, but here's where he fatally overplays his hand.
Another driver of Netanyahu's monstrosity is personal desperation. With corruption charges hanging over him and public dissent and fury growing, he wields this war as a human shield for his political survival, like an emperor setting his palace ablaze to distract from the mob at the gates. He's taken a page right out of Modi's playbook: stoke fear, wave the nationalist flag and distract from the rot at home.
Yet, as dissent grows at home, the supposed defenders of international law are AWOL. The UNSC is deliberately unseeing and unhearing. The ICC is mute as ever. The ICJ watches from the sidelines — spineless — as the verdict on South Africa's genocide case against Israel drags on for who knows how many years. They dare not even whisper the word 'Israel' in a war crimes probe for fear of sanctions.
International humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war gather dust while Netanyahu tramples them underfoot, running his blood-soaked campaign and committing atrocity after atrocity.
The US, of course, isn't just complicit; it's all in. Back up Mr Trump and there's no war. But no. He still parrots his dystopian fantasy that Gaza is "an incredible piece of real estate" better off under American control. He is willfully blind to Gaza's plight, yet quick to call for peace in the looming war between Pakistan and India - hypocrisy at its finest.
Even as evidence of war crimes stacks up higher than the rubble of Gaza's hospitals, Western capitals double down, funneling weapons, money and political cover straight into Israel's hands.
France, to its credit, has offered a spark of sanity in this madness. Macron is convening a UN conference with Saudi Arabia this June and has already broken ranks, declaring, "We must move toward recognition and we will do so in the coming months." It's a small crack in the wall of complicity, but a crack nonetheless. Will others follow or is sanity now an outlier?
But pressure from France alone won't suffice. Europe holds the economic clout to force a reckoning as most of Israel's trade flows through it. Cut that off and the squeeze will be impossible to ignore. So it's high time for economic sanctions, arms embargoes and diplomatic isolation.
Organisations like the OIC, the Arab League and other regional bodies must stop hiding behind empty rhetoric and finally act. They must pursue legal action at the ICC — however slim the chances — sever economic and trade ties and stand by Palestinians with real, sustained support, no matter how long the road or steep the climb.
Because if not now, when! If not in the face of such barbarity, bloodbath and open genocide, what else exactly would it take? And history, as Netanyahu should know by now, never goes easy on those who bet against a people's right to exist.
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